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If you're an automaker, especially one from Detroit, conditions probably aren't going to be better for you to make a lot of cash. For General Motors, that's what happened last year as the company posted a record $9.7 billion net profit. [...] Yet even with the earnings, GM gets no respect from the stock market. Its shares were down 3.5 percent at midday Wednesday to $28.61. Investors haven't been kind to auto stocks for years. GM shares are down more than 15 percent in the past year, and are more than $4 below the company's initial public offering price of...

GM said it will sell the Chinese-built Buick Envision, a crossover SUV, in the U.S. market starting next year. The UAW attacked the plan, saying it was "a slap in the face." It said GM should reconsider its plans and instead build a version for the U.S. market at a U.S. plant. "The men and women of GM and the American taxpayers who invested so much in GM's future deserve better," said the union. GM agreed in its latest labor deal to invest $8.3 billion in its U.S. plants over the next four years to create or retain an estimated...

General Motors says it will sell in the United States next year a vehicle made in China, becoming the first major US automaker to do so. http://news.yahoo.com/gm-sell-china-made-vehicle-us-first-214648322.html

NEW YORK: A U.S. judge on Monday said that General Motors Co may be liable for punitive damages in lawsuits it faces over an ignition switch problem that prompted the recall of millions of vehicles last year. The decision from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber in Manhattan could increase GM's financial exposure to claims for injuries, deaths or loss of vehicle value stemming from the 2014 recall. Unlike compensatory damages, which are meant to make up for plaintiffs' losses, punitive damages are designed to punish defendants for egregious or negligent conduct, and to deter future misbehavior. Gerber said, however, post-bankruptcy...

United Auto Workers union members at General Motors appear poised to approve a new four-year contract with the company. Workers at two union locals at a huge factory in Lordstown, Ohio, east of Cleveland, and at an SUV assembly plant near Lansing, Michigan, voted overwhelmingly for the deal on Friday. ...

A report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security has found that the Department’s Federal Protective Service (FPS) division wasted about $2.5 million of taxpayer money in 2014 on an extravagant fleet vehicle program. It is not surprising that images show that the vehicles in question appear to be manufactured by crony company , General Motors. A House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, headed by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), requested the audit on the FPS’ fleet operation. The report unveils a fleet of 1,169 vehicles which were leased at...

Corruption: One carmaker's mistake killed nearly 200. Another might have evaded federal emissions laws while a third failed to issue a recall. Which one committed the biggest sin, according to the government? Here's a hint: It's not the automaker known as Government Motors. GM, more officially known as General Motors, will pay a $900 million fine in a settlement reached last week with the Justice Department. The automaker admits it hid an ignition-switch problem that has been linked to 174 deaths.

The response of the Justice Department to General Motors’ ignition switch defect cover-up was announced last week. GM’s failure to address the deadly defect led to the loss of lives of at least 169 people. Any hopes for the families of the victims that the crony status of GM would not stand in the way of justice were squashed as the company was given a slap on the wrist by its friends at the Obama Administration. The Justice Department’s news release regarding the meager $900 million penalty reeked of hypocrisy as it tried to paint a picture of a repentant...

It would appear that the insiders at General Motors do not have as rosy a view on the financial outlook for the company as they would have the rest of the public believe. The well-paid executives at GM sold out of another $2.8 million worth of shares in June according to Yahoo Financial statistics. Of course, the sales of shares are pure profits for the higher-ups at GM, considering that the elite group of executives receive millions of dollars’ worth of GM shares for free through stock options. So, what have the highly-paid executives at GM done to earn...

Today, we requested that the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform undertake an "independent" investigation of the General Motors ignition switch recall delay, in light of newly obtained emails by lawyers suing GM. Those emails suggest that the Treasury may have timed its final sale of GM shares to precede public knowledge of the ignition switch fiasco. They also cast doubt on GM CEO Mary Barra's previous account of what she knew and when she knew it. Here is the text of a letter I sent today to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, in photo, the incoming Chairman of the...

The 2016 Chevy Volt promises to be a much better hybrid than its predecessor, with a lower price and better performance... and unfortunately for GM, that improvement might be hurting sales of the outgoing model. The Detroit Free Press reports that there were roughly 6,000 unsold 2015 Volts as of April, or more than twice the 2,779 that sold in the first four months of the year. Sales are down 46 percent versus the same period a year ago, and dealers appear willing to make some serious concessions to clinch a deal.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra is dismissing any talk of a possible merger with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. […] Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne recently floated the idea of merging with GM or another global automaker. He is a proponent of industry consolidation and says only the biggest automakers will survive. …

First-quarter profit at General Motors rose nearly eight times above a year ago as U.S. consumers spent big on pickups and SUVs and the company didn’t have to set aside a huge stack of money to pay for recalls. The Detroit automaker said it made $945 million, as consumers got used to lower gasoline prices and decided to buy bigger vehicles. That’s right in GM’s sweet spot, with trucks such as the Chevrolet Silverado pickup and Cadillac Escalade large SUV. Profit margins on the trucks are sizable, with analysts estimating that GM makes more than $10,000 per vehicle. In the...

General Motors will stop making the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks in June and July due to slow sales and to deal with the change to an all-new version of the gas-electric hybrid car. The company says the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that makes the Volt and four other cars will probably stay open through the summer despite plans for the Volt. The factory also is undergoing construction so it can build a new full-size Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Volt starting late in the summer. Sales of electric and hybrid cars have slowed this year, largely due to low gasoline prices....

General Motors agreed to buy back $5 billion in stock by the end of next year as part of a plan to return more cash to shareholders. In return, an activist shareholder decided to drop a potentially divisive bid for a seat on the company’s board. The move, announced Monday, is part of a deal with Harry Wilson, a former member of the government task force that restructured GM coming out of its 2009 bankruptcy.Wilson, who represents four hedge funds which own about 2 percent of the company, had previously accused GM of hoarding cash to the detriment of shareholders...

So I opened the email and to my surprise up popped "SAVE THE ERF" from Ford. The narcissism of this junk science has reached it's peak "imo" in every aspect of our lives feeding us the propaganda of Big Government and Socialist agendas. Those people who are doing this have no clue how truly useless they've become when they take junk science like this and promote it thinking they're going to Save the Planet. What audacity and utter incompetence. Fellow humans must be in an out of control egotistical state to actually think that we can control this planet. Earthquakes,...

NLPC Associate Fellow Mark Modica was a guest yesterday on "Closing Bell" on CNBC. We will post the video soon, but here is a transcript: Sara Eisen : At first it seemed like it was just another activist investors at work but our next guest says something else is in play here. We're talking about Harry Wilson, the restructuring expert who served on President Obama's auto industry task force during the financial crisis and was instrumental in bringing GM out of bankruptcy. Now Wilson is a GM activist investor and represents hedge funds holding a total of 34 million shares...

General Motors Co (GM.N) said Thursday it will build the Chevrolet Bolt electric car at an assembly plant near Detroit, where it will invest $200 million for the project. The compact Bolt, shown as a concept vehicle at the Detroit auto show last month, is designed to have a range of 200 miles, and will cost about $30,000 apiece after tax breaks. GM's announcement confirms a report last week by Reuters that the Bolt would be produced at the under-used Orion assembly plant in Michigan. The only electric car currently available with a 200-mile range is the Tesla Model S,...

General Motors Co on Monday showed its Chevrolet Bolt concept car with an electric driving range of more than 200 miles and a $30,000 price tag, offering a view into where the U.S. automaker is pushing in development of electric vehicles (EV). The all-electric Bolt is a concept car not currently slated for production, but Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra said the company is committed to developing an affordable long-range EV, and GM said they could develop the car in as little as 18 months. “This is a real game changer,” Barra told reporters at the media preview at the...

Obama plans to talk manufacturing in Detroit ahead of auto show By Khalil AlHajal | kalhajal@mlive.com January 05, 2015 at 1:48 PM DETROIT, MI -- President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak in Michigan on Wednesday and is expected talk about manufacturing jobs, according to the Associated Press. The visit will come days ahead of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which begins with press previews Jan. 12. The president is expected to highlight manufacturing jobs and his decision to bail out the auto industry in a Detroit-area visit before heading to Phoenix the next day to focus...